or targets obscure booky man countries like yemen pakistan and mali so we have to ask ourselves if we as americans will ever learn from these mistakes or what we continue to believe in invisible threats and manufactured evidence at face value i won't tell you let's break the set. looking for a membership or anything like that. last month north korea announced it will conduct a nuclear test in protest of the latest round of sanctions invoked against them as a response secretary of state john kerry and his counterpart in south korea made it very clear that it would be unacceptable for north korea to proceed with testing their nuclear program but this is nothing new in two thousand and six and two thousand and nine north korea issued two bomb tests despite international pressure

and similar threats and it all comes back to the same line that north korea is an imminent threat to the u.s. and its allies that the big bad communist regime having control of a nuclear weapon is dangerous to the peace and stability of the world but your first stop to ask yourself how much do we actually know about this country that we're being told to be so afraid of well if you don't hear information from the corporate news you might think of this isolated nation as a rogue military state led by a teenage like lunatic with a happy trigger figure ready to nuke the world and no i'm not going to sit here and tell you why north korea is just some misunderstood stepchild that deserves praise however i think that there's a crucial point of view missing from the discussion so let me give you a little background on the korean peninsula has a rich history that spans over two thousand years the vast majority of which it was a single unified country but that all changed in one thousand nine hundred five when. became another victim of the emerging cold war between the us and the soviet

union at this time the country was split in two and neither side was given full control of the peninsula and the north a communist state was permanently established under the soviets a pro western state in the south. and what started then has played out for the last sixty years heightened tensions with hundreds of thousands of troops and missiles pointed at each other from the border it's known as a de-militarized zone although remains the most heavily militarized area in the world so to discuss north korea's nuclear drive it's tense relations with the u.s. and the rationale of the harsh rhetoric coming from the international community i'm joined now by a national coordinator for the answer coalition brian becker i thank you so much for coming out and thank you so when bush got into office i think north korea really came on the radar of a lot of americans as the axis of evil as part of the axis of evil i mean when north korea become one of america's targeted enemies and why well the united states

and twenty five other nations invaded south korea and then north korea in one thousand nine hundred fifty and it was under the pressure of the north korean army and the chinese army the volunteers who came across the border in the fall of one thousand fifty that the u.s. suffered its first military defeat they were driven out of the north korea and down to what is now the demilitarized zone so during that time the north koreans were were presented as an existential threat they were linked to china's communist revolution which happened one year before that part of the soviet bloc in other words the us cold war narrative was the world was going communist there was a series of revolutions or national liberation victories and that korea was at the epicenter of this global struggle. and i mean what threat if any do they actually serve this country well actually north korea doesn't pose any threat whatsoever north korea is a member of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty it's wanted for the past sixty

years to have a peace treaty that ends the korean war the u.s. won't sign a peace treaty instead the u.s. imposes economic sanctions on a small country. they want to have peace with the united states now and the last months of the clinton administration in one thousand nine hundred ninety two thousand clinton open the door to north korea meddle in all. right who was then secretary of state went to pyongyang it looked like there would be a thaw perhaps of between north and south korea as you mentioned in your opening that's a country that's been divided a country that had been united for thousands of years divided so much so that ten million families have missy and people on the other side of the border when that happened north korea suspended its nuclear program when george w. bush when clinton reached out to them when bush came in he said that's history they're now the axis of we will along with iraq and iran and bush invaded iraq that sent a clear message to the north koreans if you like iraq are part of the axis of evil and the u.s. invades iraq you're next and that's when north korea said ok we're going to go for nuclear weapons they reopen the nuclear plants they kicked out the i.a.e.a.

inspectors in other words they were reacting defensively to bush's threats. you know a lot of people don't realize that south korea isn't necessarily have beacon of freedom here i mean we have this hard line against north korea how we need to spread democracy human rights i mean talk this park or see a little bit well south korea was a military dictatorship tens of thousands of people went to prison for long times they were all tortured that was under u.s. military occupation the u.s. still has tens of thousands of u.s. troops in south korea it's an occupied country just the way iraq is or was. during that time if you said anything nice about north korea if you said that was a good regime you went to prison for ten years i went to north korea in one nine hundred eighty nine i traveled with a twenty one year old south korean woman from north back to her home in south korea at the d.m.z. she was arrested by u.s. soldiers and given five years hard labor for having dared to visit her relatives in

north korea and the u.s. as well there is a bastion of democracy why because the u.s. uses south south korea as a puppet it is an occupied country and i think a lot of people also think you know that south korean support the demilitarized zone that they support that the vision i mean is this also. propaganda i mean i'm sure the vast majority of them want to be reunited with lost family and friends on the other side you can't have a more emotional issue than then the question of family division in korea the korean people want to be united they want to see their brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles they've been separated now for sixty years that happened suddenly at the beginning of the korean war. young koreans especially have rejected the old hard line anti communist ferber that was typical propaganda of the south korean military and you see lots of young south koreans especially people under the age of thirty they were the champions for democracy in south korea they're also the champions for reunification that's a strong sentiment on both parts of the korean peninsula absolutely i mean it makes

complete sense you know every every week things like i'm reading something more insane about north korea you know mass gulags the widespread starvation cannibalism even in the fact that the government claims that unicorns are real but the more you look into these claims the more it seems like they're kind of wildly exaggerated accusations taken out of context i mean is this all part of the plan to paint the country as just out of control dictatorship to justify our military intervention in the world when your segment with colin powell testifying falsely at the u.n. about iraq we have to just remember what that was like there was a demonization of the targeted government saddam hussein he was meant to be the exaggerated face of evil everyone was supposed to hate him and fear him and he had weapons of mass destruction of course he didn't but you have to demonize the enemy in order to prepare the population for military escalation for military conflict that's exactly what's going on in north korea and the u.s. north korea is an educated population that has a long life expectancy it's

a country that wants peace that would like to be interactive with the rest of the world and instead is treated as iran is now or is cuba has been for six decades because they too had revolutions as the ultimate demons what we need is a change in the you and america the. government policy we need to say we mean the u.s. people need to demand from the u.s. government sign a peace treaty let's end the korean war it's been sixty years and sanctions instead of targeting the people why deprive people of food and medicine as we did in iraq does that really do anything except create the atmosphere the precursor for actual military confrontation yeah absolutely i mean sanctions just the fact that people this kind of the country not the government i mean but what i continue to ask even about you ron about any country that really is a sovereign nation i mean why don't they have the right to develop nuclear weapons why is it only western powers that can build up their nuclear arsenal i just don't understand that contradiction and north korea has the right to send sent away its into space which is why they were sanctioned to december at the same time they set

up a satellite which they have a right to do india set off a nuclear test that north korea is part of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty india is not why have this double standard where north korea is so demonized for doing what all countries want to do seventy five cents said away it's up in two thousand and twelve north korea was the only one that got a u.n. sanction it's because the united states government is determined to overthrow that regime and put into place in north korea what they have in south korea a proxy or a puppet government in this vital strategic area right on china's borders and why why it china why put the pressure on china we have about a minute well the united states is china basically is a strategic competitor ultimately i think the united states would like to overthrow the chinese communist government they would like to be able to do to china where they have done to china in the past what they've done to other countries return them to a kind of a semi colonial status so that the great vast resources and riches of the country

can belong principally to wall street or to london or to paris rather than to the chinese people absolutely when you see these joint u.s. and south korean military exercises happen you know a long planned peninsula really out there you really have to. you know who's really running who in the region of north korea was carrying out massive war games and stage. of the united states a long long island people would be up in arms that's what the u.s. and south korea are doing today north korea absolutely thank you so much i think a lot of people fear north korea because they don't understand it. in terms of the people there i think opening the dialogue talking about it and really understanding the complexities very important thank you so much brian becker director for the answer coalition thanks. to feel like you see so far check us out on a blue blue dot com slash breaking the sat there you can watch the latest episode of our show like yesterday which featured cancerous capitalism and brain disease and the u.s. education system you can also scroll through and watch every show simply middle of

december so both of you who favored out some comment on how we're doing on hulu dot com on the set and i like to break my preaching for now but they to me here about the ongoing situation and next. to. thank. the to. thank.

you steve. it's. easy to. say. play. play pick up a. player. play

play. play play. play. play play play. the behave. today i want to explore a country i have yet to talk about on the show ali you may have missed what's going on in the north african nation and the hype of the presidential inauguration in the super bowl but three weeks ago france initiated a military intervention seeking to eliminate terrorist threats in the country in the time since the french led operation has invoked tactics such as air strikes and mass arrests to bring down islamic militants all of course of the support of the u.s. military and while the short term strategy is playing out on the ground the u.n.

african union and other world leaders met today to talk about how do achieve peace and stability in the long term but while their bombing for peace strategy really hold in a volatile nation already stricken with poverty and violence top of the game from inside i'm now joined by eugene puryear editorial board for liberation thank you so much for thank you so eugene i want to start off by playing devil's advocate here mollies government sought out help from france and by extension the u.s. i mean if there voluntarily asking for help should we give it well i think first thing we have to realize is that the government had just a coup had just happened no one was really sure what the where the power center live was it with the military the coup leaders some you know coalition of people who had formally led the country so not to mention the northern part of the country had just succeeded so the idea that the president making a call to you know the palace in paris being representative of the needs and wants

and desires of the million people is i think at least open to question but even if in fact that is the case we have to continue to ask ourselves what are the consequences of this and even if someone asks for something is it the best situation to resolve that conflict absolutely and also what are the motives i mean i'm always a former french colony so is the central african republic which is interesting because they also asked for help to france they were denied it why mali and not this country well i think what's going on in mali and we've recently seen a. central african republic which was engineered by the french but i think when we look at mali you have to look at the sort of seriousness of the situation i mean france and especially france and other western nations were very close it was very close to them completely losing control or potentially losing control of the country and they have all these resources that exist only in mali but all across the sahara and in many of these other countries there are also sort of similar movements so whether it's uranium whether it's if these governments have been loyal to france it had sort of i want to say profit sharing but you come in and you take

our minerals we get a little bit of money people go completely hungry these sorts of arrangements could be broken up and so they had to act and they had to act fast to keep this sort of major major economic relationship for france intact absolutely and i want to play a clip. actually on the ground there now. regional banks food medicine and fuel specifically in this part of the region in mufti there are about seven thousand refugees children so for the most unless medication is brought in the centers treating malnutrition like the one we saw in mopti would face tragedy of course like any intervention you know the under-reported issue of the refugees that come out of the situation is really untold talk about the situation of the refugees and what's being done to help them of course well i mean it's pretty unbelievable that the u.n. refugee agency has estimated there's one hundred fifty thousand refugees outside of the country and just to give you a little sense of that the main camp on the border between. mauritania. has

fifty five thousand refugees and so it's almost a little ridiculous to call it a camp i mean chapel hill where the university of north carolina is in the united states roughly the same size as that and there are about fifty thousand in bamako the situation for these refugees is dire i mean many bamako which is the capital of mali have been reported to be sleeping outside there's no sort of you know there's no blankets there's no water there's no medicine and it's the same case in. southern. part of mali where there's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of displaced people now of course aid agencies are trying to go and help certain individuals but it's hard to get to some of these places where people are but you can't just sort of jump on the highway and get there i mean i think it's important for people to realize when we talk about mali when we talk about the share when we talk about mauritania these are some of the poorest countries in the world and so it makes the task of aid provision to refugees extremely difficult and this is something that is still ongoing the united nations announced today some extra

measures they're taking the red cross to take in the same thing but the reality of it is it's hard to get to certain people and there's a limited amount of research absolutely and it's not just people losing their homes it's people actually being targeted in assassinated by the government and possibly with the french as well for allegedly supporting rebels i mean it's biggest we've heard this line time and time again your gene is there any sort of clear factors determining what support for rebels means to summarily be executed there's no clear factors or at least none that we've been given the million government the french government there especially denying that these things are happening and the french say well if they are happening we're not for it but it seems that essentially all they're doing is going out and looking for people who seem to be lighter skinned who look like they may be or what the so-called arabs african arabs and they're just looking you look like someone who could have been with these quote unquote rebels so we're just going to kill you just because who knows what other reasons people maybe want to steal something from your house you don't let them they kill you i mean it's a complete sort of free for all in that sense because we have no real on the ground

right there at the moment of the testimony of refugees testimony of what's going on so i think what we see clearly though is it's almost sort of a form of ethnic cleansing very interesting and you know this all brings me back to president along who said he'll stay there as long as necessary i mean you have one line saying this week is the end we've heard that i mean pretty much every sort of western light intervention this happens i mean it's very easy to say well it will be two weeks and we're in an hour. you know how long are we going to be there what does this really looking like is this going to be a long term strat. i think this is going to be a long term very long term potential occupation i mean president when the. first happened he said that the goal what they would consider the end goal was a united mali under the control of a central government in bamako which is something that i mean who knows when that could happen and the other piece of it is they're continually pushing forward while african troops african troops are going to take over but the reality is most of those troops are not. chad has sent a large number of troops and at least originally was said that chad was going to be

operating under french military command under the african force that was being sent there not to mention there will continue to be support from france the united states from the air even a french ground troops are removed i mean we see the united states for example a new drone base in which they said was a direct response to the situation in mali we know that france can project air power into mali and these sorts of things which give the african force on the ground sort of a value added thing that allows them to be more successful will continue going forward and also today what we saw is this idea that there should be a u.n. peacekeeping force which transitions. into mali for the african force but as we saw in the congo there's been a peacekeeping force for any number of years now they spent eight billion dollars it's done almost nothing to staunch the flow millions of people being killed in the eastern part of the congo and any number of peacekeepers have actually been accused of working with different rebel groups to sell gold diamonds temper all these different things that are happening where unbelievably great just human rights abuses i mean anything of a peacekeeping force in

a country is really just an extension of occupation as we see in haiti a lot of these other countries i mean let's talk about that. i mean we have you know here that we're supporting rebels in syria that are affiliated with al qaeda and then we have mali we're claiming it's all about terrorism i mean is this about terrorism or is this an excuse to just dominate militarily we have about a minute left i mean it has nothing to do with terrorism i mean they say oh we've got to get rid of but whether it's libya or syria they seem to not really care they say oh it doesn't really matter that. yeah i mean yes. largest armed force in syria is an al qaeda force but it's ok and here it is it's one hundred percent about resources there's no doubt about it they are terribly afraid that whether it's a rebellion islamicist rebellion whatever it is across the region which is experiencing a drought right now and is desperately poor could very easily make it very difficult for these companies to go in to the civilian region and get the resources there which france is high in particular but also the united states and britain is highly dependent look very nice to hear someone cut through the rhetoric and b.s.

eugene puryear editor at liberation news thank you so much for me on me. you may remember my interview last week with torture whistleblower an ex cia official john kerry aku and which he had this to say about if the u.s. torture program continues today. it seems on your definition of torture the enhanced interrogation techniques included everything from from an officer grabbing a prisoner's lapels and giving him a shake up to waterboarding and sleep deprivation and cold cell with ice water being thrown on you were putting you into in a dog cage and keeping him there for days at a time it depends on what the what the definition of torture is. my guess is that coercive techniques have not ended so not only did the government redefine what torture is they also created

a legal framework to justify what it was for the last decade by means of dry boarding prisoners and get moer holding people indefinite detention torture is still ongoing but perhaps what's most egregious is the american government's continued practice of extraordinary rendition or the export of torture to different countries around the world as if the continuation of this heinous tactic isn't bad enough a new report just released by the open society foundation should post shows how it answered this practice really is reveals that fifty four governments around the were. have hosted or still host cia black sites locations where prisoners are shipped to be interrogated and tortured far beyond the scope of u.s. law interest in the enough to libya and syria are two of the countries that some of these detainees were taken to pay i guess as long as we're collaborating on torture we can all get along right but i digress because what this is all about is about terrorism torture is just another tactic justified by fighting an elusive war on

terror which brings me to torture is ugly stepchild drones not just any drones the drones that are used to execute american citizens with zero judicial oversight check out this big news story that broke last night that's right we now have official documentation that confirms the government's motives to exercise drone warfare on american citizens the fact that they've created a legal framework without due process isn't a surprising part in fact this is been known already most notably with the death of u.s. citizen and we're all walking and his sixteen year old son what is surprising however is the ambiguous language within the internal memo that the government tried so hard to keep secret the sixteen page document introduces a a more expansive definition of self-defense or what should be considered an imminent threat to our national security it says a kill could be ordered on americans that they're simply thought to be quote an associated force to al qaeda or carers and even if there's no intelligence

indicating that they're engaged in any sort of plot in other words it's completely up to the person behind the kill list to interpret the term and who fits the criteria to be murdered scary thought right well this drone mentality isn't sitting well with some communities one virginia city has already taken the initiative to pass a resolution against drones that's right last night just after this memo was leaked to the city council of charlottesville virginia called. for a two year moratorium on drones in the state and they called for congress to adopt legislation prohibiting information obtained from domestic drones. yes this is a huge start it's amazing to see a local community take action against the federal policy and i hope it catches fire across the nation but until there is full transparency accountability for these drone wars and torture programs justice will never be served and that's

a shame really. because the truth is there for all to see. there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with hiv aids lives within a year of a diagnosis of each other over sixty two percent of those species are diagnosed with aids this is a problem that frankly is substantially preventable it was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about there were really good public health campaigns that people were really focused on this problem you know you certainly should be able to have a lot less h i feel a lot less human suffering. live

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live live. live . speak your language it's not clear what programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on all t.v. reporting from the world talks about seventy ip interviews intriguing story i used

to sleep in trying. to find out more visit arabic all tito to call. place. blame . play. live. wealthy british style some time to basics pilotless. planes.